- end_line
- 8426
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.725Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8360
- text
- preternaturally cold, gemmy glance out of his pellucid blue eye, that he
seemed more a metaphysical merman than a feeling man; "is a rattle-snake
accountable?"
"If I will not affirm that it is," returned the other, with the caution
of no inexperienced thinker, "neither will I deny it. But if we suppose
it so, I need not say that such accountability is neither to you, nor
me, nor the Court of Common Pleas, but to something superior."
He was proceeding, when the stranger would have interrupted him; but as
reading his argument in his eye, the cosmopolitan, without waiting for
it to be put into words, at once spoke to it: "You object to my
supposition, for but such it is, that the rattle-snake's accountability
is not by nature manifest; but might not much the same thing be urged
against man's? A _reductio ad absurdum_, proving the objection vain. But
if now," he continued, "you consider what capacity for mischief there is
in a rattle-snake (observe, I do not charge it with being mischievous, I
but say it has the capacity), could you well avoid admitting that that
would be no symmetrical view of the universe which should maintain that,
while to man it is forbidden to kill, without judicial cause, his
fellow, yet the rattle-snake has an implied permit of unaccountability
to murder any creature it takes capricious umbrage at--man
included?--But," with a wearied air, "this is no genial talk; at least
it is not so to me. Zeal at unawares embarked me in it. I regret it.
Pray, sit down, and take some of this wine."
"Your suggestions are new to me," said the other, with a kind of
condescending appreciativeness, as of one who, out of devotion to
knowledge, disdains not to appropriate the least crumb of it, even from
a pauper's board; "and, as I am a very Athenian in hailing a new
thought, I cannot consent to let it drop so abruptly. Now, the
rattle-snake----"
"Nothing more about rattle-snakes, I beseech," in distress; "I must
positively decline to reenter upon that subject. Sit down, sir, I beg,
and take some of this wine."
"To invite me to sit down with you is hospitable," collectedly
acquiescing now in the change of topics; "and hospitality being fabled
to be of oriental origin, and forming, as it does, the subject of a
pleasing Arabian romance, as well as being a very romantic thing in
itself--hence I always hear the expressions of hospitality with
pleasure. But, as for the wine, my regard for that beverage is so
extreme, and I am so fearful of letting it sate me, that I keep my love
for it in the lasting condition of an untried abstraction. Briefly, I
quaff immense draughts of wine from the page of Hafiz, but wine from a
cup I seldom as much as sip."
The cosmopolitan turned a mild glance upon the speaker, who, now
occupying the chair opposite him, sat there purely and coldly radiant as
a prism. It seemed as if one could almost hear him vitreously chime and
ring. That moment a waiter passed, whom, arresting with a sign, the
cosmopolitan bid go bring a goblet of ice-water. "Ice it well, waiter,"
said he; "and now," turning to the stranger, "will you, if you please,
give me your reason for the warning words you first addressed to me?"
"I hope they were not such warnings as most warnings are," said the
stranger; "warnings which do not forewarn, but in mockery come after the
fact. And yet something in you bids me think now, that whatever latent
design your impostor friend might have had upon you, it as yet remains
unaccomplished. You read his label."
"And what did it say? 'This is a genial soul,' So you see you must
either give up your doctrine of labels, or else your prejudice against
my friend. But tell me," with renewed earnestness, "what do you take him
for? What is he?"
- title
- Chunk 3